Sometime before the early 1980s, the Moon Mist flavour was likely introduced to Scotsburn by a so-called flavour house, said Jennifer MacLennan, the former marketing co-ordinator with Scotsburn dairy from 1993 until Agropur took over in 2017.įlavour houses are companies with commercial food labs that develop, manufacture and supply flavours to various industries. It's around this time that a competitor came to town.įor more than a century, one of the largest dairies in the Maritimes was based out of Scotsburn, a village surrounded by sprawling dairy farms on Nova Scotia's north shore. The family business was eventually sold to Twin Cities Co-op Dairy Ltd., which later became Farmer’s Dairy Co-op Ltd., though the family stayed active in the industry for a few years after that. "We would go over for lunch or dinner and eat ice cream for dessert and often the conversation would return to his days in the business and how Moon Mist was created," he said. "My grandfather was big into ice cream, he ate it every day, probably twice a day," O'Brien said. Hart's grandson Peter O'Brien, now a 54-year-old classics professor, recalls ordering scoops of Moon Mist at local ice cream parlours as a child. The company soon after began making the blend of banana, grape and blue raspberry under its Polar Ice Cream brand. It's had a lot of staying power."īruce Hart returned from his ice cream training - and purported invention of Moon Mist - and got to work for the family business, Halifax Creamery Ltd. "I think it's so popular because people in Atlantic Canada grew up with it in the 1980s and are now serving it to their kids. "If you've ever had a scoop of Moon Mist ice cream, you know it just has a very unique flavour and iconic aroma," said Rae Ryan, a Truro, N.S.-based research and development specialist with dairy giant Agropur, which acquired Nova Scotia's Scotsburn dairy in 2017.
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It evokes both nostalgia and pride, making a cameo on the Nova Scotia-based TV show "Trailer Park Boys." A local distillery sells a limited edition Moon Mist vodka and folk artists have sought inspiration from the flavour. Many say they go through several 11.5-litre vats on a summer weekend, leaving children in tears and adults in a huff if they sell out. Ice cream stands and corner stores across the Maritimes scoop out Moon Mist all year long. Moon Mist has become a symbol of the East Coast's uniqueness in Canada, a cultural marker of sorts for the region. But it's defended by many as the region's unofficial frozen treat. To some, it's a heavenly trilogy of tastes, while to others it's an odd mash-up of cloyingly sweet flavours. Yet regardless of the flavours of the tricolour swirls, Moon Mist ice cream would come to be celebrated as Atlantic Canada's favourite ice cream. The exact flavour combination of Moon Mist shifted over the years, with a popular local dairy swapping out blue raspberry for blue bubble gum in its recipe. "It was always part of family lore that my grandfather invented Moon Mist."īy the mid 1970s, the specialty flavour was catching on. "My grandfather told us he got to experiment with flavour mixtures, and that's how those improbable flavours came together that some people love and some may find disgusting," said Peter O'Brien, grandson of the late Bruce Hart.
He called it Moon Mist, a lush ice cream flavour with colourful ripples of yellow, purple and blue. It was there, legend has it, that a young Bruce Hart had the audacity to swirl three ice cream flavours together: banana, grape and blue raspberry. The dates and places are foggy - as often happens with family history passed down through generations - but it was sometime before or after he served during the Second World War and likely took place at what's now the University of Massachusetts, a school with strong roots in agriculture and food science.
HALIFAX - The lore in the Hart household was as rich as the ice cream served every day.Īfter joining his family's creamery business, the story goes, Bruce Hart travelled from Nova Scotia to the U.S.
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